Thrombosis

John Smith: To ask the Secretary of State for Health when NHS Connecting for Heath plans to make an electronic version of the National Venous Thromboembolism (VTE) Risk Assessment model available to NHS acute trusts for the purposes of recording the proportion of hospital patients risk assessed for VTE; and whether a specific hospital acquired VTE code will be made available.

Mike O'Brien: A venous thromboembolism (VTE) electronic risk assessment tool, fully compliant with the recently-published National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence guidelines on reducing the risk of VTE in patients admitted to hospital, should be available for use by acute and primary care providers in England by the end of June 2010.
	There is currently no individual standard clinical terminology (SNOMED CT) code for the representation of 'hospital-acquired' VTE. A number of codes were added to SNOMED CT during 2009 to support the introduction of electronic VTE risk assessment. There are also pre-existing codes that can be used for recording incidence of the condition, as distinct from risk. There are formal mechanisms for the introduction of new SNOMED CT codes should this prove to be necessary.